Regarding the recently published articles and Media announcements of the HIV case with the newborn baby. This experiment one more time confirms the mechanism of action of chemotherapy of HIV. This means chemotherapy works only when the HIV virus is in the blood stream.

When the virus reaches all of the viral reservoirs in the system, it is more difficult for chemotherapy to extract the virus from the viral reservoirs of the blood stream. The treatment appears to have been successful because the virus was already in baby’s blood steam the treatment used does not allow the virus to reach the reservoir like monocyte-macrophages, Langerhans cells, follicular-dendritic cells, retinal cells.

By using immunotherapy treatments we are increasing the level of natural killer cells and CD 8 which are responsible for attacking the virus in any corner of the system. This is the reason that chemotherapy has a fast effect under the level of PCR (Polymerase Chain Reaction) whereas; immunotherapy works slowly but does not have resistance.

In a recent article presenting the findings said Dr Deborah Persaud, a virologist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore said, “This is a proof of concept that HIV can be potentially curable in infants.”

Because of her risk, Dr Hannah Gay, a pediatric HIV specialist put the infant on a cocktail of three HIV-fighting drugs — zidovudine (also known as AZT), lamivudine, and nevirapine — when she was just 30 hours old.

Two blood tests done within the first 48 hours of the child’s life confirmed her infection and she was kept on the full treatment regimen, Persaud told reporters at the conference.

In more typical pregnancies, when an HIV-infected mother has been given drugs to reduce the risk of transmission to her child, the baby would only have been given a single drug, nevirapine.

Researchers believe use of the more aggressive antiretroviral treatment when the child was just days old likely resulted in her cure by keeping the virus from forming hard-to-treat pools of cells known as viral reservoirs, which lie dormant and out of the reach of standard medications.

These reservoirs rekindle HIV infection in patients who stop therapy, and they are the reason most HIV-infected individuals need lifelong treatment to keep the infection at bay.